Editorial: The Yin and Yang of 'SLJ’

My first morning in Southern California—where I attended the American Library Association’s (ALA) most recent conference—was glorious. The light was golden, the air gentle. I was almost ready to forgive ALA for sending us off to Disneyland.

But as I stood in line for coffee, I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder and turned as the woman behind me introduced herself as a teacher-librarian and longtime reader.

I smiled. You know how we love to meet our readers!

“I have just one question for you,” she said. “What business do you have printing all these stories about public libraries when your magazine is called School Library Journal?”

Uh-oh, I thought. Here we go.

I took a deep breath. I’ve learned that the last thing to do is rattle off our official tagline: “For Children’s, Young Adult and School Librarians.” That just adds fuel to the fire. Instead, I tried to deflect the question and asked what features she’d like to see in the magazine (that’s often how I get my best ideas).

Fast-forward 48 hours to the Newbery/Caldecott dinner. I was making a mad dash to the men’s room before the acceptance speeches started, when my passage was blocked by, yes, another reader.

After a few pleasantries, she launched right into it: “I wish that just once in a while you’d publish something public librarians would want to read.” My mind went into search-engine overdrive, and I was about to spew out a bunch of examples when I stopped myself, smiled, and handed her my card. “Email me with five topics,” I said, before running off.

Please don’t think our readers are a bunch of complainers—they’re not. But this frequent griping by school librarians and public librarians about their real estate in the magazine has me puzzled. (“So it’s finally getting to you,” said Lillian Gerhardt, SLJ’s former longtime editor-in-chief, when I asked her advice. “As far as I know, it’s been going on since 1954.”)

It’s not like we don’t think about both audiences. As we plan each issue, we routinely ask, What’s in it for elementary school librarians and for YA librarians? What about children’s and high school librarians? Every issue isn’t perfectly balanced, but, on average, we tend to get it right.

Besides, there are plenty of great publications—from the practical to the peer-reviewed—exclusively for school or children’s or YA librarians. But SLJ isn’t one of them.

No, SLJ is for everyone in any library—whatever they may call themselves—who serves youth. And this approach provides far more benefits today than it did even in 1954.

Most importantly, you both work with youth—albeit at different times and in different contexts. We present news and features, blogs and columns, about both school and public library issues. This is an opportunity for public librarians to learn more about the “8 a.m. to 3 p.m.” lives of their kids and teens and for school folk to learn about the services that await their students in the public library. Your missions may be different, but there are lots of chances to support each other.

Also, as Carolyn Brodie makes clear (see “Renaissance Woman,” pp. 28–31), school and youth librarians need “their stuff.” And SLJ is very much about stuff, from books to Web sites, from films to databases, from MP3 players to laptops. Our reviews and discussions, features (“Close Encounters of the Best Kind,” pp. 32–37), and annotated lists (“Focus on Hot Topics,” pp. 48–52) ensure that you have the best new content to share, whether you plan to use it in a curriculum or an after-school program.

Finally, there isn’t a school or public library conference in existence without at least one program devoted to collaboration between the two. We can no longer afford—if we ever could—not to work together. And what better place to collaborate than in the pages of SLJ?

bkenney@reedbusiness.com